Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for treating animals' hair or feather waste materials generated from slaughterhouses or stockyards.
Description of the Related Arts
In general, the hairs (or feathers) of animals, such as cows, pigs or chickens contain calcium, magnesium and the like as main components, and a surface thereof is composed of keratin, one kind of protein, which is fire retardant and is not fusible, and accordingly, hair or feather waste materials have been thrown away in the ocean or have been incinerated at a high temperature. However, ocean disposal has been recently prohibited, the waste materials are not easily decomposed, and great expenses are incurred when upon incineration treatment of the waste materials.
Furthermore, the animal's hair does not easily melt at room temperature even if the hair is immersed in a strong acid such as a nitric acid, a sulfuric acid, a hydrochloric acid and the like. Furthermore, when such a strong acid is used in a heating state, explosion may occur due to a sudden oxidation process before melting of the animal hair, and accordingly, the use of the strong acid is very dangerous. Moreover, since the strong acid contains a material such as nitrogen, sulfur, and chlorine and creates a volatile material such as ammonia, air pollution occurs and the melted materials cause secondary pollution in the quality of water. For example, about 10 minutes was required for completely incinerating 10 g of a chicken's feather by indirectly heating it until reaching a temperature of 1,000° C. using a gas burner in a state of the feather being placed in a container. Also, as a result of analyzing a flue gas with a gas analyzer during incineration, polluting gases were measured the following: CO of 50 ppm, SOx of 25 ppm, NOx of 450 ppm and the like. Furthermore, fumes and smell occurred.